Co-operative Movement

Articles tagged with the topic ‘Co-operative Movement’

Displaying 1 - 2 of 2

3091-6

W. Hamish Fraser

The Chartist Movement in Dumfries and Galloway

Recent, History, Co-operative Movement

TDGNHAS Series III, 91 (2017), 105(4.71 MB)

Abstract

Dumfries and Galloway was caught up in the struggle for political reform that became focused on the ‘People’s Charter’ in the 1830s and 1840s. The most significant mobilisation of working people in the nineteenth century attracted skilled craftsmen whose earnings and status were being diminished by industrial change. They saw it not simply as a campaign for political rights, but as a means of transforming social as well as economic relationships largely through their own combined efforts. Although none of the Dumfries leaders came to national prominence, the town was a regular venue for Chartist lecturers. Almost all commented that they found a stable and committed group of activists there, who established a very successful reading room and co-operative society and who continued the struggle for the cause despite internal divisions and external hostility.

3090-6

Ian Gasse

Co-operation in 1870s Dumfries: the experience of the Dumfries & Maxwelltown Co-operative Provision Society

History, Co-operative Movement, Commerce, Recent (Social)

TDGNHAS Series III, 90 (2016), 97(2.1 MB)

Abstract

This article seeks to provide a narrative of the development of the Dumfries and Maxwelltown Co-operative Provision Society (DMCPS) during the 1870s through a detailed reading of the first of the extant minute books of the society held at Dumfries and Galloway Archives, and covering the period from June 1870 to December 1879. Co-operative societies developed in Scotland from the late eighteenth century onwards as attempts by groups of working people to provide good-quality food supplies for themselves at affordable prices. The article shows that, during the 1870s, DMCPS experienced sustained growth in its trading activities, consolidated its membership and moved to enlarged premises. First established in 1847, more than twenty years before the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society, DMCPS survived and prospered in the 1870s at a time when Dumfries itself was enjoying a period of increased prosperity. The article considers this growth in some detail and attempts to place the experience of DMCPS within the wider contexts of Victorian social and economic development, and the contemporary growth of both Dumfries and the wider co-operative movement in Scotland and Britain as a whole.